


[addictive substances are our friends]

by aces



Category: Dead Like Me, Doctor Who: Eighth Doctor Adventures - Various Authors
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-17
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:58:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wore fingerless knitted gloves and a purple leather jacket and would not have looked out of place slumped against a toilet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	[addictive substances are our friends]

**Author's Note:**

> Um, um, it takes place during Halloween, which is why Fitz can recognize Mason. Oh, screw it; I'm just writing for the hell of it anyway.

_1963_

Fitz was drunk. Absolutely shit-faced, in fact, and he hadn't been this drunk since—well, since the night he said yes to that damned Dr Roley and let his mum be taken away to live in his house. He couldn't _afford_ to get drunk like this, but now that he'd gotten the bloody job at the garden shop money wasn't quite so tight.

He'd played all night till his fingers were stiff and sore, and he'd snagged as many free drinks as he'd wanted, and by god he was _pissed_.

When he staggered into the bathroom he found it already occupied.

"Oh, sorry," he muttered and had been about to stumble back out when the quality of the retching caught his attention. It sounded like the man was making an earnest and prolonged attempt to eject all his innards. "Mate—you alright?"

He tried to kneel down gracefully, and his shoes ended up slipping on the tile so that he had to grab at the sink and just avoided smacking his head against the ceramic. While on the one hand it managed to sober him up a bit, on the other he really wished the other guy would get out of the sodding way so _he_ could throw up.

The other guy obliged just at that moment, pushing himself away from the toilet and wedging himself in the tiny space between toilet and wall. He looked up at Fitz, panting heavily, white-faced and hollow-eyed and vomit down his front. He was young, almost absurdly young, and Fitz felt more awful just looking at him.

"You look like shit, mate," the young man said, huffing a tiny little laugh and wrapping his arms around his middle.

"So do you," Fitz retorted and switched his support hand from the sink to the toilet. Ohhhh he felt ill.

The other man paused, thoughtful, then shrugged, conceding the point. "Are you going to use that toilet," he asked, "or may I get back to spewing my guts now?"

"Gimme a sec," Fitz breathed.

"Okay, well, take as long as you like," he answered politely, "only hurry up, yeah? 'Cos I might vomit all over you and I'm told the sensation is unpleasant."

Fitz slumped back under the sink. "Have at it," he gestured.

"Ta," said the other man and promptly leant back over the toilet to throw up.

Fitz wanted to support him, pull his shirt out of the way at least, but listening to him made Fitz's already-queasy stomach roil even more uncomfortably, so he stayed under the sink with his head between his legs and breathed.

Eventually he realized the young man had stopped retching and he risked looking up. He was wedged back again, eyes shut and head thrown back. He was breathing heavily through his nose. "What'd you take?" Fitz asked.

He shrugged. "Dunno, really," he said without moving anymore than necessary. "But it was there, and I was there, and it was therefore a beautiful match made in heaven." He finally opened his eyes and looked down, focusing eventually on Fitz. He smiled, beatifically. "You play fantastically by the way, mate."

"Ta," Fitz said, surprised but pleased. "I guess you heard me earlier before I got piss-drunk."

"Naaaah," the younger man said. He seemed comfortably ensconced in his tiny tiled corner. "You were inspired, mate. Doesn't matter how it sounds on the outside; _you_ knew it was good."

Fitz blinked.

Another party guest—though Fitz wasn't entirely sure anyone had actually been invited to this party so much as shown up at the flat all around the same time, except for the stragglers who'd been trickling in for the past few hours—crashed into the bathroom, blearily looked around, noticed the two men sprawling on the floor, muttered an apology, and left.

When Fitz looked back, his new friend had fallen asleep pushed up against the corner behind the toilet, chin tilted upward. If he hadn't been snoring, Fitz would have worried he was dead.

He carefully draped the younger man back over the toilet bowl before he left the bathroom.

*

_2013_

"I will be back in one hour—no more than two!" The Doctor rushed about the console room, throwing pieces of paper about and gathering up tiny, odd, whirring instruments and shoving them into various pockets. He paused briefly beside Fitz and said in a low voice, "If I'm not back by this time tomorrow, go to this address and politely request that the people you find there release me." He stuffed a little piece of paper into Fitz's jacket pocket before spinning back into his own personal vortex.

Fitz blinked.

"Right, see you later! Go out, explore, have fun! Seattle is a _wonderful_ city! I'll be back in _five_ hours, promise!" And with that, the Doctor slipped out of the TARDIS, leaving Fitz and Trix to stare at each other across the console.

They remained poised for a long moment, and then Trix said decisively, "Starbucks," and also left the TARDIS. Leaving Fitz, of course, alone.

"'Bye?" he said to the empty air.

*

They'd materialized in a park. A bloody cold park. It was raining. He'd heard it was always raining in this city, but people said it always rained in London and Fitz knew _that_ wasn't true. Maybe stereotypes were truer in America. He wouldn't be surprised. He tried to go back into the TARDIS to get more appropriate outer wear but the door was locked and he'd forgotten his key.

Fitz sighed.

He ambled around the paths in the park and finally sat down on a bench under a large tree that had kept the bench relatively dry. With his luck, lightning would strike the tree down and kill him, but he could always come back to haunt the Doctor in reproach for abandoning him to a wretched American park. He turned up his collar and stuffed his hands into his trouser pockets and tried not to shiver hard enough that his teeth fell out.

"Oi," a voice said, and it required another, more insistent and impatient, "_Oi_!" before Fitz realized somebody was talking to him. He looked up to stare into the face of a white-faced, hollow-eyed young man. "You wouldn't by any chance be Harrison Brentwood, would you?"

"No," Fitz said curiously, "sorry."

"Fuck," the other man said under his breath. "Never mind then." He started striding away, then paused to look back and ask, "Why the hell don't you go inside?" He shook his head and turned away again, muttering "Git."

Fitz blinked.

For lack of anything better to do—and stubbornly refusing to go looking for someplace to sit inside and warm up—his eyes followed the young man, whose head darted around in search, apparently, of this Harrison Brentwood. Somebody on a bike almost ran him over, managing instead only to splash him with a big puddle of muddy water. The young man delicately wiped down his front and spoke briefly to the guy on the bike. And then he clapped the bicycler on the shoulder and—and Fitz blinked. Something small, gold, and dust-like shimmered and faded away between them. The pasty-faced young man watched the other guy bike away and Fitz jumped off the bench, heading toward him.

He didn't see but he heard a crash and scream in the direction the bicycler had gone, and by the time he stood behind the young man with the pronounced London accent, the young man seemed to be talking to an invisible person.

"Sorry, mate," he said to the air. "Nothing personal, yeah?"

He seemed to listen to something in response, nodded, and said, "Well, get on with it, then. Have fun. Try not to be such an arsing klutz in your next life," he added in a mutter as he turned around and then he screamed.

Fitz blinked.

"Jesus fuck!" the other man gasped. "_Announce_ yourself next time or something, mate!"

"That was a really girly scream," Fitz said.

"It was not," the other man immediately protested. "It was a very manly scream. Just a bit high-pitched, that's all."

"Look, I've done a fair amount of screaming in my time," Fitz said. "And that was a girly scream. What's your name?"

"Mason," the other man said warily, glaring at Fitz. "Why do you care?"

"I'm Fitz," Fitz said. "I was just wondering how you managed to do that gold-shimmery thing back there to that guy who I'm assuming just died. And," he added with a frown as he looked at the white-faced, hollow-eyed young man with muddy water down his front, "how the hell I could have met you in 1963 when you barely look any older now than you did then."

"Oh fuck," Mason said with admirable calm. "Oh fukkity fuck. I am so very viciously fucked right now, aren't I?" He blinked. "Hang on a minute. You met me in 1963? Who the fuck are _you_?"

"I'm a time traveller," Fitz said. "Who are you?"

"Oh," Mason said. "I'm just a Reaper."

*

Mason seemed remarkably easygoing about Fitz's weirdness, whereas Fitz was not yet quite so sanguine about Mason's. He suggested that they "repair to an eating establishment he knew" and ended up taking Fitz to a diner/restaurant called Der Waffel Haus, which Mason insisted on pronouncing with a horribly cod German accent that made Fitz wince on an astonishing number of uncomfortable levels. Mason ordered coffee and peered over the booth before pouring bourbon into the mug. Fitz ordered hot chocolate. With extra whipped cream.

"And you called _me_ girly?" Mason scoffed. Fitz spooned up some of the whipped cream in dignified silence. He was _cold_, dammit.

"I think I remember you now," the younger man—or maybe not anymore, if he'd gone through the past few decades in a straightforward linear manner while Fitz bopped around like a ping pong ball on a pogo stick—said suddenly, slumping back into the booth and cradling his spiked coffee jealously close to his chest. He wore fingerless knitted gloves and a purple leather jacket and would not have looked out of place slumped against a toilet. "You played, didn't you? The guitar? You were groovy."

"Ta," Fitz said, surprised. "I'm surprised you remember, I only met you the one time being sick all over somebody's bathroom."

Mason shrugged one shoulder and sipped at his coffee. His eyes closed momentarily in some kind of tiny bliss, and then he slipped a hand back into his inside pocket to pour some more bourbon into the mug. "I saw you around a lot for a year or two, playing at parties and gigs. You disappeared, though, didn't you? We all thought you'd found the permanent high."

"Not quite what I would call it," Fitz answered wryly. "You're a Reaper, you said? Does that mean you killed that guy?"

"No, no," Mason said, slurping coffee-spiked alcohol with wild abandon. "I took his soul. Makes their deaths painless that way. It's what we do. I died in 1966," he added suddenly, "and I have been taking people's souls for almost fifty years."

There was a slight pause in the conversation.

"I've died before," Fitz offered, awkwardly. "At least once or twice. This isn't even my original body. It gets a bit disconcerting if I think about it too much, though, so I don't."

Mason nodded his head vigorously. "My boss does not understand that, you see. He gets very annoyed when I steal pills from dead people, for example." Their waitress paused by their table to refill Mason's coffee mug, and he smiled up at her, beatifically, and Fitz rubbed at his forehead dizzily.

"I suppose if the drugs killed you the first time why should they affect you now?" Fitz asked. "I've been mind-fucked sideways, forwards, backwards and upside down and I'm still standing."

"Which is more than can be said for most of the fuckers out there," Mason said, clinking ceramic mugs with Fitz. Hot chocolate splashed over the side. "Sorry," Mason muttered, looking embarrassed, and huddled back against the vinyl. "I didn't actually die from a drug overdose, though you might think so, particularly if you met me during an Incident Involving a Toilet," he said after a moment, leaning forward confidentially. "But it was drug-related. Um. Indirectly."

"That's kinda how time travelling felt for a long time," said Fitz. "Like I was on psychedelics. Well, and in '68 I _did_…um. Never mind."

"It's okay, mate," said Mason. "I understand."

Fitz wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing.

"Oh," Mason said, straightening. "Oh dear. That is Rube. And everyone else. Rube doesn't like it when we talk to the live ones," he went on in an apologetic tone while Fitz twisted around to look behind him and see who Mason was talking about. A small group of people had just entered the restaurant and—Fitz didn't know if he should laugh, sigh, or kick himself for not expecting that. He turned back to Mason in time to see the other man's frown. "Although Rube appears to be talking with one of the live ones himself, so…"

"Fitz!" the Doctor said delightedly. "How did you know I'd come here? Oh, is that hot chocolate, may I have some?"

"Go ahead," Fitz said weakly as the Doctor took his mug and happily slurped from it. "This is Mason, Doctor."

"Hello, Mason! I've just been talking with your friend Rube; he is an interesting sort, isn't he? You are as well, I'm sure."

"Interesting," Mason repeated, staring at the Doctor as if hypnotized by his buoyancy. "That is not a word I usually associate with Rube."

"Oh, come on, Mason," the balding man Fitz assumed was Rube said as he stopped in front of their table. "Don't you find me an unending and bountiful font of fascination?"

Mason blinked. Fitz stared up at Rube in something approaching trepidatious awe. Rube turned his head slightly to look down at Fitz. "You must be Fitz," he said. "You're sitting at our table."

"I am?" Mason kicked Fitz under the table. "Oh." He slid out of the booth awkwardly, and the small group—just three women, but it seemed like there were more of them—swarmed around him, sliding into the vinyl benches. Rube shook Fitz's hand. "Nice to have met you. Keep your friend away from me in future, please." He sounded quite pleasant, all things considered.

"Oh." Fitz shook his hand with as much firmness as he could muster. "Yes, I see. He's a little hard to control."

"So I've noticed." Rube slid into the booth and proceeded to completely ignore both Fitz and the Doctor. Fitz looked at Mason and shrugged, helplessly. Mason gave him a tiny wave, still clutching at his coffee mug protectively.

Fitz waved back and turned to the Doctor.

"I take it you got your thing sorted?" he asked as he led his friend out of the restaurant.

"Oh yes," the Doctor nodded vigorously, sitting the empty hot chocolate mug on the table nearest to the entrance. "Where's Trix?"

"She said something about a…Starbucks?"

"Ah," the Doctor looked wise. "That might entail some methodical searching but we should be able to find her."

"Doctor?" Fitz put a hand out to stop the Doctor recklessly crossing the street and getting hit by a speeding car. "Who were those people?"

"The cleanup," the Doctor said steadily. "When we do our job wrong."

Fitz glanced back into Der Waffel House. He could see Mason, a young man with circles under his eyes and too-pale skin, laughing at something one of the women said. Barely looking a year or three older than he had in 1963.

"Our lives are really, really weird," Fitz said.

"So they are," the Doctor smiled sunnily. "Would you like to try a white chocolate mocha? I hear they're delicious."

*


End file.
